Torvløysa, May 6 2017

One of Møre & Romsdal’s BIG peaks…

My friend Petter Bjørstad is an ultra-class peakbagger, and came to Sunnmøre this weekend to make progress on the list “100 finest peaks in southern Norway“. “Finest” in this context means a primary factor equal to or exceeding 600m. Before this trip, Petter had 98 out of the 100, and he wanted Torvløysa to be #99.

Personally, I’ve had my eyes on Torvløysa for years, but never got around to make the LONG DRIVE from Gurskøy to Norddal.

Petter flew in from Bergen on Friday afternoon. I picked him up at Hareid, and we had a nice evening with my girlfriend Anne and her friend Anne May. But the Torvløysa roll call was at 4:30am, so we went to bed around midnight. I could have had 4 hours of good sleep, but in Norway we have this oddity called “Russ“. High school graduates. Two words; alcohol and music. I think I fell asleep at 3am. Not a good way to prepare for a major mountain.

Petter and I got up at 4:30 and were on our way by 5am. We took the 5:30am ferry from Hareid, arrived at Linge around 7:20am and waited for the 7:45am ferry to Eidsdal. From Linge, we had a good view towards Torvløysa. It was a BIG mountain!

Our goal for the day – Torvløysa

It’s a short drive from Eidsdal to Norddal. We followed the road to Hatlestad to see if the road to Rellingsætra was open. It wasn’t. So we agreed to park the car at approx. 300m and follow a tractor road (?) up to Rellingsætra.

Trip tracks

We headed out 8:30am sharp, on sneakers, with our skis and boots on our backpacks. We reached Rellingsætra at 9am, shortly after putting our skis on.

View from Rellingsætra

We now had a good view towards Torvløysa, but it wasn’t quite clear where the ascent route was. Time would show. Our next goal was to get to Innsetsætra and hopefully – be able to cross the river – with some sort of dignity…

Fortunately, there was a bridge just west of Innsetsætra, and now we could focus on the next leg – getting up to the high ridge.

That bridge was very, very welcome…

The route up the forest was cumbersome. There was not enough snow for skiing and way too much snow for walking. You know…

Above Innsetsætra

At 10:45am, we arrived on the high ridge and had now “only” 1000 vertical meters to go. But that was OK. The views were already stunning and the snow was nice. We had a nice, but WARM couple of hours ahead of us.

On the way to Torvløysa

There was a slightly steep section between 1450 and 1500m. I had to take this skis off in the very upper part, but Petter was able to ski all the way up.

Petter – topping out above the steep section

We now had 350 vertical meters ahead of us – up Mefjellet. I enjoyed every minute of the ascent, even though it was a really, really warm day. It’s good to feel that one is in a decent shape.

On our way to Torvløysa – with view towards (a.o.) Puttegga (second from right)

We arrived at the top of Torvløysa 1:15pm – 4h:45m after heading out. And WHAT a view! NOTHING but mountains 360 deg. around us. It’s been a while since I was up in the BIG Møre og Romsdal mountains, and it was good to be back!

View from Torvløysa

Kupenibba clearly caught our attention. If we had nothing else to think about, it would have been tempting to pay this nice peak a visit. But there was two ladies back at my house preparing a nice dinner for us, and I would choose a nice dinner with my girlfriend and good friends over Kupenibba any day…

Kupenibba

We now had 1000 vertical meters and 5,5km of nice ski-descent ahead of us. The snow wasn’t as perfect as you could hope for in spring, but it was just good enough to make the descent memorable.

Descending from Torvløysa

Back at the forest above Innsetsætra, we agreed to proceed on foot. That was a good decision, and saved us considerable time.

Back at Innsetsætra, we put the skis back on and skied back to Rellingsætra where we continued on foot. We arrived back at the trailhead 4:20pm, after a 19km and 1600 vertical meters trip.

View from the ridge, down to Rellingsætra

We arrived at the Eidsdal ferry harbour at 4:30pm sharp. Unfortunately, the ferry also left 4:30pm sharp. But on the bright side, there was another ferry leaving at 5pm. After all, it was Saturday and we were in the “outer rim”. I noticed there was a store selling ice-cream. I was thinking very hard about walking up to the ice-cream shop when a group of 4 Indians approached us and offered us two ice-creams! They had bought a “six-pack” and had two spares. Very nice! We had a nice chat and learned that two of them were from Canada – on a highly intensive 9-day tour in Norway (including Svalbard). Amazing!

We reached the 6:30pm ferry from Sulesund and were back home 7:15pm. Anne and Anne May had prepared a heavenly meal for us. Petter and I had a plan about skiing Blåtinden (1217m) in Ørsta the next day, but that a) we would not depart until 7am and b) Petter would be the driver. I had a very, very pleasant evening and slept like a child. Without Russ in the neighbourhood…